Le maître de marionnettes

Life in Taiwan during and shortly after the Japanese occupation (1895-1945) as seen by re-enacting episodes from the life of a hand puppeteer. The film includes selections from several puppet plays and some Chinese Opera scenes as well.

Episodic and can be hard to follow for those without a knowledge of Taiwan history and customs. Beautifully shot with very nice sets, costumes and exteriors.

I hate to say it, since I liked The Assassin, Millennium Mambo, and (especially) A City of Sadness, but The Puppetmaster is sort of a misfire by Hsiao-Hsien Hou's standards. He makes a biopic of sorts that also sometimes feels like a documentary, since the central figure gives interviews throughout the film, but the scenes between these interviews are so lifeless. There might be some point being made with the approach here, but it just feels borderline disrespectful to have Li Tian-lu tell a story about his past coherently and compellingly, and then for it to cut to (sometimes cutting the narration off in the process) a dramatized scene that farts around and doesn't do much. I'll stress that I said it feels borderline disrespectful, not that it is disrespectful, because I'd like to hope there's some reason for this approach I just didn't pick up on. But I didn't like how it felt, and that's something I can't help but take away from watching this film just this once.

It's a little more interesting nearer the end, and the interview segments are good. It's the first 45 or so minutes that are the most torturously slow. The film is visually distinctive, even if I didn't really like how most of it looked and was edited. But it's all just a bit baffling, enough for me to suspect it might be a Hsiao-Hsien Hou misfire, even if it's more likely something I didn't get, just based on the strengths of his other works.

From start the finish, there is absolutely nothing exciting about this movie. It is a character driven piece, that lacks absolutely any excitement. In fact, it is at times hard to pay attention to the movie due to how dull it is. Avoid watching at all costs.

In fact, I haven't seen a movie that has been as dull as this. From the music, which consists mainly of drums, to the lack of any visual appealing elements. There is absolutely nothing appealing about this movie. Most of the movie, is a series of characters having long monologues. These speeches last anywhere from 5 minutes to 10 minutes usually. They add plot details, but the way they do it is so incredibly dull and boring. Once again AVOID watching this movie at ALL costs.

I wonder if the people who write rave reviews of this movie have actually ever sat down and watched it? I wonder if the director of this film has ever watched any movies himself--except his own. Everything about it is wrong--except maybe the actors are ok--but not very interesting or involving to watch.

As a film detailing a period of history through the experiences of a family, THE PUPPETMASTER is very similar to HEIMAT. By using an acting troupe as the narrative and thematic focus of this history, it resembles THE TRAVELLING PLAYERS and FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE. Stylistically though, it couldn't be further apart. Unlike the character drama of the first, the elegant, complicated camerawork of the second or the intense emotionalism of the last, THE PUPPETMASTER is a rigidly formal work, breathtaking to look at, baffling to understand, eventually oppressive to watch.

The main narrative concerns the life story of the title character, up until the end of World War II - his story parallels the occupation of his country, Taiwan, by Japan. Interspersed between highly stylised and composed dramatisations of his life are interviews with the man himself as an old man.

Although Hao's other films share a similar aesthetic (including the marvellous A CITY OF SADNESS), it is the puppetmaster's profession that shape the look of the film. He puts on elaborate puppet shows; and in the same way his little theatre looks like a cinema screen, Hao's film is less a fluid narrative than a series of tableaux vivants. I think there are only two camera movements in the entire film. Each scene is elaborately composed - decor overwhelms the characters, with masses of pillars, frames and characters dwarfing any individuality. There are hardly any close-ups, and such is the visual clutter, and the sombre lighting it is often shot through, that it's often hard to make out which character is which. The direction is highly distanced and artificial, letting these characters, like rats in a trap, blindly blunder, unable to find an exit.

Any perceived objectivity in this style is deliberately illusory, and it is clear that the protagonist is not the only puppetmaster. Hao's strings are rarely unfelt, and behind the domestic traumas and bildungsroman narrative is a bitter denunciation of the effects of colonialism, and rigid hierarchical societies. Much of the entrapment of environment is linked to the traditional repressions of Taiwanese family life, with its absurd rituals of family nomenclature, masculine honour, and arranged marriages, which allow free rein to domestic brutality and the corruption of decency.

It is no wonder, therefore, that the Taiwanese become such willing quislings, deference and anonymity being a familiar part of everyday life. The puupetmaster is deeply implicated in this, being a prominent, and officially valued member of cultural propagandist groups. Much of the local and symbolic detail was shamefully alien to me, so I obviously lost much, and maybe Li's plays - generous, enthralling excerpts of which appear at crucial points of the film - have a hidden subversion lost to the ignorant viewer.

What isn't lost is a remarkable visual sensibility which often speaks for characters who can't. The historical saga is compelling, and the puppetmaster's life is often moving. The recourse to storytelling and an almost scientific faith in superstition and magic gives the film a feel of magic realism. It's just that by the second half of the film, you're throwing things at your TV, just to get the blasted screen to move.